Page 23 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

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Suddenly, there were angry voices breaking through their stalemate. Young men quarrelling. The noises came from the floor immediately above.

‘Matteo and Luigi?’ she asked.

Jack held up a finger. ‘Listen!’

He might listen but all Flora heard was a babble of furious Italian.

‘What’s happening?’ she whispered. ‘Can you understand any of it?’

‘One of them,’ he said quietly, ‘I think it must be Matteo, seems in a major panic. He says that the police are looking for his aunt. And for the painting. And now that we’re here, now we’re prisoners, everything is much worse. Or something like that.’

There was a pause while Jack screwed up his face in concentration. ‘He’s shouting again about the police coming here. What has Luigi just done? Things get worse and worse.’

Another burst of Italian followed. ‘Is that Luigi speaking?’

Jack strained to hear. ‘I think it is. He’s saying that it was you – he means Matteo – it was you who sent the ransom note. It was a stupid thing to do. It’s you that’s made things worse.’

The voices were now very loud, angry and overlapping, leaving Jack struggling to understand. Another stream of invective and he shook his head. ‘I’m not sure…they seem to be shouting insults at each other. Oh!’

Abruptly, the voices had stopped and in their place, the sound of feet thumping across the floor. A crash of china? Of furniture?

‘They’re fighting?’ Flora’s anxious eyes met his.

‘Sounds like it. Oh!’ he exclaimed again.

‘What?’

‘Someone has a weapon. A knife? It must be Luigi. That was Matteo’s voice, telling him to put it down.’

Together, they stood motionless, locked in a kind of paralysis, as loud thumps continued to hammer through the ceiling. A crackle of splintered wood echoed loud and clear. Thudding feet, scuffling limbs, furious yells. But then, the most horrible cry.

The long drawn-out cry of death, Jack knew.

Flora’s face was ashen and, without another word, he took hold of her hand and tugged her towards the steps.

‘We have to go, Flora. You must trust me. I’ll see you safe.’

Pulling her after him, he slipped into the water before she could protest any further.

Holding on to the bottom stair with one hand, Jack held out the other. Mutely, Flora took it. She had tumbled into a nightmare she couldn’t escape but, forcing herself not to think, she was coaxed down the slippery stone, step by step. Whatever had happened in the restaurant above was bad, very bad, and she was desperate to get away. Filomena…she hated to leave her, alone and frightened, but there was nothing they could do for her while they were locked in this room. They must, at least, try to escape.

In the darkness, she sensed the water slither slowly up her ankles, then her knees, and now she was waist deep. She felt a rush of intense cold, a creeping penetration, an enemy closing in, and was terrified. She wanted to kick out, to scramble back into the room, but girdling her round the waist, Jack held firm. For a minute, he trod water with her until, satisfied that she had calmed sufficiently, he said, ‘Hang on to my shirt and let me do the work.’

Heart thumping, she followed as he launched himself forward, clinging to the clump of linen, a fragile lifeline. Water was splashing at them on either side and blurring what vision she had. Unable to see clearly, she nevertheless sensed that Jack was swimming further out into the canal – into the maelstrom of boats and water traffic. Why was he doing that? She wanted to yell for him to stop. But the water was lapping her ears, lapping her mouth, and she was bereft of breath. All her energy, all her wits, were focused on continuing to clutch the one piece of security she had, the ragged piece of shirt.

It seemed they had been in the water forever and a deadly numbness was taking hold, leaching strength from her limbs and turning arms and legs into pillars of ice. The water was creeping higher, too, then it was bubbling around her mouth and then – she was beneath the surface, floating downwards, her grip slowly loosening as she fell into calmness, into peace. Until…animal instinct, an innate desire to live, had her grab at the lifeline she had almost lost and pull herself closer to Jack. Forcing her head above water, Flora breathed air once more.

Jack was swimming in a different direction now, veering left towards the cobbled quayside. Over his head, Flora caught a glimpse of lights, of people. Her heart exploded with relief. They were only yards from safety.

Five minutes later, he was at the bottom of a flight of steps and reaching down for her.

‘We made it,’ he gasped, water streaming down his face, his hair plastered to his head. ‘And it looks as though we have a reception committee!’

She barely registered what Jack was saying. We’re safe, we’re safe , were the sole words her mind would form and it was not until they stood dripping and cold on the canal side, that Flora realised that the lights she’d glimpsed weren’t just those of the street lamps. They were far too bright and far too numerous, and coming from a succession of boats moored close by. Some of the lights were blue and swirling. Police! But how?

A man in uniform was approaching them, a frown on his face. ‘ Cos’è questo? ’ What is this? he’d asked. Then in English, ‘You go swimming?’

‘Not voluntarily,’ Jack replied, too exhausted to speak anything but his native language. ‘We have been held prisoners.’

‘ Prigionieri? ’ The man frowned even more deeply, unsure it seemed if they were making fun of him.

‘ Sì , at La Zucca.’ Jack pointed towards the restaurant – far closer than Flora would have imagined. Was it such a short distance that they’d swum? It felt as though they’d taken on the Atlantic Ocean.

‘Ah!’ the officer exclaimed. Their plight was now making sense. ‘You swim from the cellar?’ He sounded astonished.

Jack nodded. ‘It was the only way to escape,’ he said simply.

‘ Vieni, vieni! ’

The man hustled them forward, and they had no choice but to follow him to the nearest police launch. At the bottom of the polished steps, he spoke rapidly to his colleague at the wheel and in minutes two large blankets were produced. Gratefully, they took one each and swathed themselves in warm wool.

‘ Caffè ,’ their rescuer ordered. Then turning to them, ‘We talk later,’ and with that, he strode away.

‘I’m not sure these chaps are the Venice police,’ Jack said, as he cuddled her close. ‘The badge looks different.’

‘Is different,’ their new acquaintance said when he brought them the coffee. ‘We are from Rome.’

Jack’s face cleared. He evidently understood what was going on and Flora wished she could, too.

‘Art theft,’ Jack told her.

The man nodded. ‘We come for the Rastello.’

‘But how did you know where to find the painting?’

He tapped a finger against his nose and grinned. ‘We have ways.’ Then laughing, he said, ‘A man, he talk.’

‘A waiter at the restaurant?’ Jack hazarded a guess.

‘ Sì, il cameriere .’ He handed them two mugs; it was the best coffee Flora had ever tasted.

‘What made you think of the waiter?’ she asked, when the officer had returned to the helm.

‘When the chap came to the table tonight, I sensed he was uneasy. He was asking me to come to your aid but was doing it under orders, I felt, and he didn’t like it one bit.’

‘But you came still!’

Jack grinned. ‘A wife in peril! What else could I do? But that waiter, I’ve remembered, was the man who came between Franco and the owner when they quarrelled the first night we ate at La Zucca. And he was the same man who served us when you first went searching for the women’s washroom. When we left, I reckon he must have seen Luigi Tasca come after us. With a knife.’

‘The same knife as tonight’s?’

‘Who knows, but at least Tasca was only practising on me. Unlike this evening.’

‘If the waiter called the art squad, it must have been before the fight. Otherwise they’d never have got here in time.’

‘I guess so. Maybe, for him, seeing us locked up, as well as Filomena and the painting, was the last straw. He’ll be in trouble for not calling the police earlier, but far less trouble than if he were caught in the restaurant red-handed. Look, something’s happening.’

They stood up, mugs in hand, and watched as Matteo Pretelli appeared on the quayside. He was handcuffed and being marched between two policemen to a second launch.

‘He’s alive!’ Flora looked stunned. ‘He wasn’t the one to die.’

‘Nor was Silvio Fabbri.’ The restaurant owner was next to appear, once more handcuffed and pushed none too gently down the steps of the launch.

‘He was in the restaurant after all,’ Flora said. ‘Keeping watch, no doubt.’

‘And recognised us. Which was why you were forced into that room and I had a sack thrown over my head.’

As they stood watching still, an ambulance pulled up at the quayside and they hadn’t long to wait before a stretcher, carried by two orderlies, emerged from the La Zucca entrance. Ominously, a sheet covered the entire body.

Many of the restaurant’s customers, already alarmed by the arrival of the police and the sight of handcuffs, were aghast at this latest development, abandoning dinner plates and gathering their belongings for a hasty departure.

‘Luigi Tasca?’ Flora asked.

‘It has to be.’

‘Dead,’ the policeman confirmed, coming forward and nodding with satisfaction at the scene beyond.

‘So, now, Matteo is a murderer as well as a kidnapper. Poor Filomena. She loved her nephew.’

And there was poor Filomena, released from captivity and carried in the arms of a burly officer. Very carefully, he lifted her down into the third of the police launches.

Flora’s heart went out to her. ‘What a dreadful ending to a dreadful experience.’

Jack’s hand slipped beneath the blanket to find hers. ‘She’s going home,’ he said. ‘Home to Father Renzi. That must count for something.’